DAY TRIPPER. Part 1

 A trip down memory lane. 

During the mid to late 1960s I was a working musician in a popular local pop band.  

During this period the band took metherdrin (speed) to help us keep alert during long hours and late nights. 

I worked a day job, Monday to Friday 7.30am - 4pm and worked doing gigs on the weekend's. Often we'd play an after noon gig and 2 evening gigs on a Saturday and Sunday. That's 6 gigs a weekend, often not getting back home before 3am.

We relied on the speed to keep us awake and pumped up.

When the Summer of Love arrived in 1967  and a new drug called LSD became the talk of the world, I felt a need to seek out the drugs availability in Sydney. 

Musicians and artists around the world claimed that the drug opened up the doors of perception and creativity; The Beatles headlined their opinions. 

Psychedelic music , art and fashion flooded the cities of the world and the hippie culture was born.

                               1967.

It was way back in 1967  ( I think) that I experienced my first trip at the tender age of 18.  

I was with my older brother and a friend and we drove from Penrith to Paddington to visit a hippie cellar on Oxford Street. The car ride took us an hour.

We asked the guy on the entrance to the cellar if we could buy a couple of trips to take away and he sold us 2 trips for $4.

Back at the car me and my brother took our trips and our driver began the long drive home.

Before we got halfway home the trip began to come on.

Suddenly we were inside a spaceship full of colour and sound, everything was alive and vibrating.

Our remaining journey home seemed to take forever as we both became lost in time and space.

We were living with our parents and decided to stay in our back yard , we lay on our backs watching the stars in the sky whilst listing to music on my brothers tranny.  

I left my body and sailed Across the Universe; I was a million miles away , lost in a world of my own. 

                   Donovan.

I  was engulfed by the macro and micro, swamped in a quantum soup and drowning in waves of light and sound. 

Everything was alive and alien thought waves bombarded my brain demanding my response. I was being over stimulated mentally and began to fear losing control of the journey. 

I told myself " slow down, relax and go with the flow" which immediately took away my fear and anxiety.

 

I felt connected to the universe and wanted to discover more of the strange dimension I found myself within. 

At sunrise we crept inside and crashed out for several hours. 

2ND TRIP.

A couple of weeks later me and my brother caught a train to the CBD and then a bus to Paddington, returning to the cellar where we bought our first trip.

This time we paid the doorman for 2 trips which he instructed us to take before entering the premises. We did as asked and stepped inside to a room full of sound and colour. Fluorescent day glo psychedelic posters filled the walls lit by a black light on the ceiling. Incense permeated the air.

Inside were several unknown strangers sitting on cushions scattered around the floor. In the middle of the room sat a table ladder with fruit and bottles of water.

Everyone appear relaxed so we took our seats on the floor and awaited for the trip to begin.

The music was out of this world and some of it unheard of before. 

          Jefferson Airplane

Has to be one of the finest produced albums of the 60s . Still have it in my collection today.

Another album I remember from the night is the psychedelic Rolling Stones album " On her satanic majestys request".

         The Rolling Stones

Acid inspired and a response to the earlier release of The Beatles psychedelic Sargent Peppers.

From the Sgt. Pepper album I recall being blown away by the song "Within you, without you", although the entire album was mind blowing.

    Within you without you

The whole experience made me feel as young as a new born baby and yet as old as creation. I was reborn from a human to a cosmic being of the Universe.

Time and Space were one and past, present and future co existed as one entity. 

From then on I began to believe that what we are taught to believe as reality was only Maya; an illusion.

My perception of reality became more than 3 dimensional, new normally invisible realms became visable.

Music was a palette of colours, albums by The Grateful Dead, Eric Burdon and the Animals, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, The Doors, Cream and Jimi Hendrix saturated my mind and body during my time in the Cellar full of noise.

We walked out of the cellar at dawn and found our way home by train.

Back to the real world.

My band THE LIMIT  won the Hoadleys Battle of the Bands for Sydney's western suburbs and awarded a management contract.

Immediately we were booked as the support act for The Easybeats, The Loved Ones, Normie Rowe, Johnny Okeefe, The Masters Apprentices and The Dave Miller Set.

        The Dave Miller Set.

Every weekend we played at least 6 gigs as well as holding down a daytime job.

For 2 years we worked our butt off and found little time to drop anymore acid and instead used metherdrin to keep us pumped up. 

At the end of 1969 the band broke up, we were exhausted and burnt out. 

After being both the drummer and later the bass player in the band, I decided to take time out and learn to play the guitar. 

For 3 years I stopped taking drugs and explored meditation.

So ends Part 1 of my hippie adventures all those years ago. The Summer of Love 1967 shall never be repeated. It was a time when the collective youth cultured believed that All we need is love.